Vacation Tales 1: Nostril-flaring fun

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I am back! We arrived back in Canada last night, and what an interesting time we had. In many ways, it was wonderful. In others, your head will shake, your nostrils will flare, and you will be happy that you are reading about my adventure, and not yours!

My last post was written at a coffee shop, and that evening, I returned home to find issues with my internet service. It continued on and off until the weekend of the 11th and 12th. For those of you who follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you may have seen my post about exchanging equipment at the local internet provider’s storefront. To my surprise, I received an actual response from the company via Twitter where they actually made an online attempt to “assist me”. TLDR: nothing was accomplished by switching out the modem, and services were down until the technician arrived on Wednesday.

Thursday morning at 6:15 am we were scheduled Let’s try that again.

After much planning and saving, we were able to book a week away. We chose a 4* that was discounted, and booked both of us for less than $1,900. We were pretty happy with that choice. I booked through Sunwing, and our booking was for an afternoon flight from Toronto to Cayo Coco, direct flight, then a week at Memories Caribe. This was in the area that was affected by Hurrican Irma, but I had researched that the area was good to go, according to Sunwing and words from Cuba’s tourism and the resort. Our flight home would bring us back late Thursday/Early Friday morning. We planned according to this package.

The week before we were leaving, I logged into our booking, and found that our arrival flight was changed to 6:15 am and our departure flight from Cuba was changed to 3:15 pm. BIG DIFFERENCE. I preferred the new timing, but I had not planned for that. I had made arrangements for the other flight, and we are shifting almost a whole day back. Ok, I can work with this. I was a little annoyed at this point that Sunwing did not take it upon themselves to notify us of this change, but I was glad we checked in advance.

So back to Wednesday. That afternoon, I received a call from Sunwing, letting us know that our direct flight was changed (yup, I saw that, thanks for letting us know) and… oh yea, we have to stop at Santa Clara’s airport to let off the passengers that are going there.

What? I had booked a direct flight, I said.

Sorry about that. It’s in the fine print that we can do that. – Sunwing

But… that’s not what I paid for and not what I based my choices on… (useless mumblings to the rep who says that she has no power to make any changes) …

Oh, and by the way – Sunwing offers no compensation for the changes, no apologies for the changes, and no free offer to upgrade my seats for the changes – even though I did pay for the elite option to book my seats in advance. (not the extra room seats, just the advance booking)

Flight now longer. Change of times. Okay, I can deal with this, I decided. I will not let this affect my trip.

I worked until the end of my day, then headed home, where I had asked my hubby to be present for the cable technician. (We take turns taking time when a household appointment is scheduled – my turn was a couple of weeks ago when our rescue kittens had a spay/neuter appointment.) Found out that he’d planned for his mother to come early, as she was house-sitting, dog-sitting and cat-sitting for us. She is fantastic, by the way. Best house-sitter ever, no judgments and no expectations. So I get home… to no technician.

Okay, he has a couple of hours in his window, and I didn’t expect to be first, so that’s ok. I knew,however, that the minute we served dinner… incoming technician.

As time was at a premium, we forged ahead and plated dinner. Sure enough, the technician pulled in at that very moment. (Why can’t I win the lottery like this?)

Tech came in… fixed modem… internet on… half hour later, he was off to next appointment, and I was happily setting up movies for our trip.

We were doing well! Suitcases almost packed, carry-ons ready. All we needed to do was… oh, that’s a long list of last minute packing, laundry, cleaning, etc. Only so much can be done in advance, but here we were.

Did I mention my mother-in-law managed to lock herself out of her email… AND Facebook… all while we were trying to get ready? I love her to bits and pieces, but how she manages a computer at her home is beyond me as she always gets lost on mine. An hour of resetting passwords, calling her provider to fix her email password, hanging up because I figured it out in the 30 minutes we were waiting, having the tech call us back (astounding!), telling them we figured it out, fixing Facebook… yep, there went an hour. I saved her password, saved the links, wrote it down, had her go through the motions twice to make sure she knew how… good. I figured she was set!

(Spoiler alert – this wasn’t enough, more later.)

It’s now approximately 11 pm, I’m exhausted. Hubby is zooming around doing “stuff”, and I am now packed. I shower, change into the clothes I will wear for the flight, and I am just about to have a nap.

2 a.m.

“Hon, wake up. It’s almost time to get up, and I think the dog peed on your carry-on.”

And that’s where I am going to pause the story of my vacation, as we are almost a thousand words in, and I need to start getting ready for hubby’s work party tonight.

XO,

Steph

PS – when was the last time you went on a vacation to another country? Where did you go?